This post contains affiliate links and I may be compensated a tiny bit if you make a purchase after clicking on the links. The Savor Summer College Scholarship winners thank you!
College Scholarship Tip: Avoid Fancy Fonts
This simple college scholarship tip can make applications more attractive to the judges!
Using fancy fonts may seem pretty and impressive, but this practice is actually unprofessional and frowned upon.
A few well-known and acceptable fonts that students should use are Ariel, New Times Roman, or Calibri.
The same font should be used for the entire application, including essays and scholarship/activity resumes.
This keeps the student’s work visually appealing, clean, and easy to read. The normal font size should be between 10 and 12.
College Scholarship Tip: Avoid Fancy Fonts Click To Tweet
Students should resist using a smaller font to squeeze in more information, as this will frustrate scholarship judges, especially those that may have inadvertently left their glasses at home that day! Learning what scholarship judges look for in their winners is an extremely strategic and smart move.
Learn how I helped my son win over $100,000 in college scholarships by clicking here.

Open to High School Freshmen, Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors! APPLY NOW HERE

Monica Matthews is the author of How to Win College Scholarships. She helped her own son win over $100,000 in college scholarships and now shares her expertise with other parents and their students. She truly has “been there, done that” in regard to helping parents and students navigate the scholarship process.
Her method of helping students in finding college scholarships, writing unique and compelling scholarship essays, creating amazing scholarship application packets, and more have taught desperate parents to help their own students win thousands of scholarship dollars. She teaches them how to apply S.M.A.R.T. with outstanding results.
Monica’s scholarship tips have been featured on many prominent websites, and she has been dubbed the “Go-To” expert on college scholarships.
I hate fancy fonts in just about everything, so this is great advice. Clean and easy to read is a great motto.
Yes, clean and easy to read sums it up perfectly! Thanks, Molly!
Such a simple tip, but so often overlooked. Thank you for pointing it out.
Following lots of simple tips often adds up to BIG scholarship success. 🙂
Excellent advice. Says the person with the funny font on her blog. But I always used this approach for work, applications, university, etc. I was always times new roman, as I dislike ariel for some reason!
New times roman is a good one too. Thanks for sharing!
This is such a simple, but critical point. So many times, my students (middle- AND high-schoolers)thought crazy fonts made their work stand out–no, it made them illegible and amateurish.:-)
Reminds me of negative attention. Thanks for stopping by, Lee!
This is great advice, that seems simplistic but it’s not so “plain” to a lot of people. Ha! I made a bad joke there. But I couldn’t agree more. Hard-to-read fonts turn me off when I’m reading anything, and they take away from the author’s message, I think.
Right! Thanks, Rica!
Some fonts may appeal but are so difficult to read. Great tips for the college student or anyone really. Blog Share Love. Sue from Sizzling Towards Sixty.
Right, this tip also applies to job applications. 🙂